Most PSX games used sequenced audio created by the sound chip, not digital file formats (such as MP3). Sequenced music is generated by the system using samples. PSX basically uses the same concept for this type of audio as the SNES (which also used a Sony sound chip). The PSX simply had 3 times the number of available channels.
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How much more powerful was the N64 compared to the PlayStation anyway?
- Thread starter Snakeyes
- Start date
LittleJohnny
Banned
I rather look at this:
Than this... Can you say pixelation?
MGS
Tomb Raider:
And it got worse with Tomb Raider 2, not better... Oh god! My eyes!!!
Now HAIL TO THE KING!!
I was messing around with my 64 again yesterday and one of the things that stood out to me was how poor the texture filtering can actually look up close. It's still much better than what the PSX could produce but 3D accelerator cards for the PC could do much better. It becomes very jittery and messy at close proximity in many games.
This is what I'm talking about.
Wasn´t there a cheat in Turok 1 N64 that pixelated textures and had some very sluggish animations? Post some pics for comparison´s sake!
MidnightCowboy
Member
I'm late to this, but Crash, especially 3, animates better than the Banjo games. I love the games, but Banjo is way more stiff than Crash. Crash is so fluid and expressive.
Darkangel
Member
I used to have that same TV a long time ago, my parents got rid of it a few years back. If only I had realized how awesome it was for SD content...
I don't actually have any idea what you mean.
How would I go about enabling such a cheat?
Your comparisons are so far off base and inaccurate.
You even managed to throw a PC 3D accelerated shot of Tomb Raider in there with better texture filtering than anything on N64.
Conker looked better than nearly everything on N64, was released late in its life from the most talented 64 programmers, and ran at a very low framerate. Trying to draw comparisons like that is silly.
skullwolfgp
Neo Member
Just for fun, here's the Saturn games that run at weird resolutions (that I know of).
Saturn Bomberman's Wide Field battle
Die Hard Arcade
VF2 (You can see the interlacing artifacts in this one)
For comparison, here's Daytona USA CE, which runs at the normal res.
I took these snapshots with the SSF emulator, but they look basically identical to actual Saturn output. I have a Saturn but no capture card.
Saturn Bomberman's Wide Field battle
Die Hard Arcade
VF2 (You can see the interlacing artifacts in this one)
For comparison, here's Daytona USA CE, which runs at the normal res.
I took these snapshots with the SSF emulator, but they look basically identical to actual Saturn output. I have a Saturn but no capture card.
It was the "Quack Mode" or jokingly called PSX mode. You can enable it by entering "CLLTHTNMTN" or the Ultimate Cheat "NTHGTHDGDCRTDTRK" which will of course unlock every cheat.
There doesn´t seem to be a video on YT or image available to demonstrate the effect, if you have the time for it you should try it it is actually pretty fun to play through the game this way.
skullwolfgp
Neo Member
I'm pretty sure it's more obviously referring to Quake, not the PSX. Hence the removing the animation frame interpolation and bilinear filtering.
That does make more sense, I just remember people calling it the "PSX mode" back then. Cut me some slack, I was only 11 back then!
So wait, no PS1?
Oh right, bc. So wheres the Wii? ;pNot needed with the PS2 there. Two PS2s even.
Jake Tower
Banned
Second row, first console.
Oh, I actually DO have a PS1, but the PS2 makes that redundant.
I have a lot of additional consoles not attached in that shot. I have a 32x/Genesis 2 combo, PSX, multiple Dreamcasts and Gamecubes, and an NES.
The Wii currently resides in my primary home theater setup along with the other current gen systems. When the WiiU replaces the Wii, however, I may move that system to the retro setup.
That's actually a white Japanese PSTwo.
I'll have to give it a look. That sounds interesting, actually.
Jake Tower
Banned
I'm referring to the GameCube.
Interesting... the major advantage N64 has over the PSX is that it can display vast pieces of terrain using only a couple of large polygons, while the PSX has to subdivide the same terrain into a much larger number of polygons. Because of this, the PSX's polygon count advantage effectively goes to waste.
EDIT: Looks like CTR gets around this to a degree by using quad rendering on the terrain. Very interesting!
Danny Dudekisser
I paid good money for this Dynex!
I'm always happy when I click on a thread I know has been necro'd, but instead of some moronic, weak shit, I find that actually somebody bumped it with a really interesting post. Good job, whoever did this!
PS1 4 lyfe
PS1 4 lyfe
A Black Falcon
Member
Interesting comparisons. They do a great job of showing how the N64's more feature-rich polygons allow developers to use fewer of them since they don't need to cover over visible polygon seams.
On the N64, of course, large polygons display just fine with no edge problems, so you can use many fewer polygons as a result. The high-poly flat surfaces you see in those pictures are entirely a result of trying to cover up the PS1's low-accuracy 3d. It helps, but does not entirely get rid of the problem; all PS1 games have polygon-seam issues somewhere or other.
The PS1 did on average push more polygons than the N64, and few N64 games match the polygon counts of the top PS1 games, but the main reason for the huge disparity you see in those wireframes is of course that the PS1 doesn't have perspective correction, Z-buffering, etc., so in order to cover up the visible polygon seams developers were forced to use many small overlapping polygons.PS1 is a polygon pushing monster confirmed.
On the N64, of course, large polygons display just fine with no edge problems, so you can use many fewer polygons as a result. The high-poly flat surfaces you see in those pictures are entirely a result of trying to cover up the PS1's low-accuracy 3d. It helps, but does not entirely get rid of the problem; all PS1 games have polygon-seam issues somewhere or other.
I'm sure the PS1 can do big polygons too, but large, non-overlapped polygons would have horrendous poly-seam issues! It looks terrible, which is why eventually developers started doing what you see in those pictures there.
JordanN
Banned
Not to defend N64 but remember back in 90's, 3D was still new and developers were experimenting with different workflow. So some models may have bloated geometry.
For example, this picture seems to have lots of n-gons/vertex poles.
Now a days, here's what a mesh should look like (although obviously, it has more geometry)
There are some things that are legit though (there are reflections missing in the N64 version)
For example, this picture seems to have lots of n-gons/vertex poles.
Now a days, here's what a mesh should look like (although obviously, it has more geometry)
There are some things that are legit though (there are reflections missing in the N64 version)
milkham
Member
can you show us the back of your setup? i wanna see the forest of cables
SmokedMeat
Gamer™
I dunno, there are certain examples of games, in certain genres, that stood out as more impressive on one console over the other.
Neither console had a clear cut lead over the other imo.
Neither console had a clear cut lead over the other imo.
PlumCantaloupe
Member
Fascinating technical analysis in this thread. I have to agree that the N64 games generally looked superior if we stick to developers that gave a damn (Nintendo, Rare, Iguana Studios etc.), though the blurry textures could be a turn off.
Sony developers really were creative with their constraints, ushering in the age of pre-rendered backgrounds and FMV's that the mainstream hardly cared or noticed wasn't real-time though.
Sony developers really were creative with their constraints, ushering in the age of pre-rendered backgrounds and FMV's that the mainstream hardly cared or noticed wasn't real-time though.
Fact!
JordanN
Banned
Oh please.
It's not "lazy developers" why the games look worse. The N64 was also a bitch to program for and contained several bottlenecks (shitty latency, limited texture cache, tiny storage capacity). The micro code or whatever that made N64 games run better was suppose to be off limits to developers, hence why only Rare, Factor 5, Nintendo took advantage of it.
If Nintendo designed the N64 to be more third party friendly *cough* *cough* I think we could have seen better results all around.
Edit:Correction about the microcode. I meant Turbo3d was off limits, developers used the poorer fast3d mode instead (with some writing custom to that).
PlumCantaloupe
Member
I agree that it was a poor choice of words, as what I mean is not that they were lazy as you might assume (I don't generally agree with this "lazy developers" statement ever). What I mean is, for reasons likely only know to the publishers, great effort was not put into working with the machines strengths.
For example, look at the PS2 versus Gamecube. The Gamecube was arguably a more powerful AND easier to develop for platform but developers willing to Invest were able to make the PS2 shine brighter than the GCN at times.
Well, the reason for using many small triangles as opposed to fewer, larger ones aren't issues with seams... It's issues with affine texture mapping that will result in textures on entire polygons looking warped in perspective space (and even worse when clipping triangles against near/far planes).
Subdividing geometry gives a more correct image as the area of affine texture mapping gets smaller before being corrected by a projected vertex.
Winterfang
Banned
Even then I knew PS1 had terrible 3D. Me and my friends use to make fun constantly about Snake's lack of face.
deriks
4-Time GIF/Meme God
Very powerfull, check that:
Shadow Man on PSX doesn't run well. It has 20fps and massive loadings, and lacks stuff... It's a mess. And I have to mention that some N64 games doesn't run at all on the PSX. I read on a magazine that a developer said that Turok 2 cannot run.
N64 "works with paper" textures, PSX works with squares. Basically, the N64 was the first step into todays development style, while PSX used the old pixelated (and easier for the time) thing.
Shadow Man on PSX doesn't run well. It has 20fps and massive loadings, and lacks stuff... It's a mess. And I have to mention that some N64 games doesn't run at all on the PSX. I read on a magazine that a developer said that Turok 2 cannot run.
N64 "works with paper" textures, PSX works with squares. Basically, the N64 was the first step into todays development style, while PSX used the old pixelated (and easier for the time) thing.
staticneuron
Member
Compared with Arioco's post something is amiss about this comparison. Given Many of the games it looks like the PS pushed more polys per second and despite the trilinear filtering on the N64, most textures seem better.
Given how powerful the N64's processor was I imagine this was an example of smarter design winning out over brute force. In addition to the cartridge format, I am guessing the unified Rdram of the N64 probably is the cause of alot of the issues because the devs had to deal with latency. Despite the core of the PS main chip being slower, the graphics and mdec engine had their own separate performance rating and the separate GPU and SPU also had their own discrete pool of ram. Chances are the sum of all parts is what made alot of games simply look and perform better on the PS. Granted this is also due to developer ability but man, both systems had some good looking games which makes it a bit difficult to compare art design vs technical achievement without some info on the bts performance. So again, spec wise the N64 should have danced circles around the PS1 but the real world results (sans mem expansion) made it seem as if there were some bottlenecks in N64'd design that prevented it from being the unquestionable king of the hill.
examples:
http://www.lensoftruth.com/retro-head2head-resident-evil-2/
joecanada
Member
Oh wow. You have to be lying to yourself if you think PS1 games were as clean and presentable as this.
Instead, you got the definition of low res.
Oh wow. Someone cherry picking screenshots in a thread like this. Again.
Danny Dudekisser
I paid good money for this Dynex!
Well, if it makes you feel better, he made that comparison back in 2012.
Not surprising considering the source!
, also the post was a year and a half ago so may want to give him a break.On an HDTV Ocarina of Time holds up so much better than Chrono Cross.
Nintendo didn't use custom microcode internally they used and optimized the same thing they and SGI had developed and made available to 3rd parties. The RCP was also fully open to 3rd parties which is why you saw more capable developers like Rareware, Boss Game Studios, Leftfield Productions or Factor 5 doing it for their games. Nothing was off limits.
TheKastorian
Member
The thing is some games (like MGS for example) could never have been done on N64 due to storage limitation. Thus, the argument as too which one is more powerful is very relative.
GamingIsDead
Member
mgs did some motion blur and distortion effects that i've never seen on the n64 as well.
baphomet
Member
Very powerfull, check that:
Shadow Man on PSX doesn't run well. It has 20fps and massive loadings, and lacks stuff... It's a mess. And I have to mention that some N64 games doesn't run at all on the PSX. I read on a magazine that a developer said that Turok 2 cannot run.
N64 "works with paper" textures, PSX works with squares. Basically, the N64 was the first step into todays development style, while PSX used the old pixelated (and easier for the time) thing.
Pretty much everything you've written here is complete nonsense.